DJ Earworm’s 2008 edition of “United State of Pop” was one of the most disturbing, oddly pretty things I’d heard in ages. The pitch-perfect mashup maestro continues his yearly tradition of crafting silk purses from a score-and-five sow’s ears with his 2009 offering:

“United State of Pop 2009 (Blame It on the Pop)” by DJ Earworm. A Mashup of the Top 25 Hits of 2009, according to Billboard.

Oddly uplifting, ne? Ariana puts it well: “100% amalgamated poptimism from a keep-your-head-up year… a ribbon of shiny all rightness pulled off the box of meh that was 2009.”

While this edition doesn’t move me on quite the same level as “Viva La Pop” did (that mournful, menacing homogeny!) “Blame it on the Pop” is still a thought-provoking and highly danceable mashup.

Repeating for emphasis: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. I can’t bring myself to sit all the way through most of these cruddy pop hits ONCE, let alone listen to them on repeat. But I find myself revisiting DJ Earworm’s yearly Billboard mashups over and over again. They are beautiful, and they frighten me.

8 Responses to “BTC: DJ Earworm’s “Blame it on the Pop””

Interesting. I loved this piece of auditory alchemy as much, maybe more, than last year’s installment. Yet straight-up optimism isn’t what I first got from it. Instead I saw a “living for the weekend” yearning for escape: things suck, but goddamn it there’s gonna be a party. I don’t know whether this is ragged, plucky determination or Pennies from Heaven-style delusion (or both), but in addition to being a much-anticipated pleasure, I think Earworm’s annual mashups may serve as a Rorshach test for the year gone by.

This time around, the visuals (and Lady Gaga’s use of them) made more of an initial impression on me than the music. I have to wonder if, decades from now, academics will pick over the symbolism of the era’s pop videos with the same fervor they do songs from the Great Depression. Economic upheaval does some funny things to popular culture.

Rambling thoughts aside, this is an excellent piece of work, and a great way to start off 2010’s BTC.

Maybe a reason for the unease-I feel it too-is the fact that supposedly mindless, soulless pop songs perfectly define the zeitgeist of last year. We (no pretentiousness intended) would like to think that our alt music/art/culture is more insightful and aware, so it’s a bit unsettling when it’s a pop mash up that so accurately reflects what 2009 was.

> “Instead I saw a “living for the weekend” yearning for escape: things suck, but goddamn it there’s gonna be a party.”

I called out the escapism in my own write-up, yeah — although getting out is not the *theme* of each of the individual hits, it informs at least one line or chorus in all of them.

But I think I’d stop short of calling it “living for the weekend” because I think that misses the (intended?) resonance. You could easily say that “Tubthumping” from 1997 was about living for the weekend, too (Pissing the night away, whiskey, vodka, lager, cider) — but that’s not the part that made it a five-year++ pop culture anthem. It’s the “I get knocked down, but I get up again” that I think is what makes it stick.

Exactly. As my friend Ponnie put it: “[it’s] an example of what’s being called the “legofication” of pop music…[songs] so generic and standardized in [their] structure (not to mention pop videos in their imagery) that all the parts are interchangeable. DJ Earworm mashes up the top 25 on the billboard charts for 2008 to illustrate this point.”